Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

They just give up, as the shadow assistant minister says. So there are 170,000 on top of the 300,000, all admitted to by the department—all admitted to and acknowledged by that government over there.

And then we look at entry level jobs. A recent report from Anglicare shows that there are very few entry level jobs advertisements compared to the number of people actually looking for work—that is, the kind of work that young Australians would be targeting to get their start. That report shows that there is only one job advertised for every six low-skilled jobseekers in Australia—only one. That is the bleak picture that young Australians face under this government. Thirty-eight thousand competed for 22,000 entry level jobs advertised across Australia in May alone. In South Australia and Tasmania, that situation is even worse. In South Australia there are nine jobseekers for every job vacancy and in Tasmania there are over 10 jobseekers for every job vacancy.

If we look at the overall picture in terms of jobs in this country, the figures for this year show that, in the 10 months to October, 90,000 full-time jobs were lost as a result of the failures of those opposite. The bulk of the jobs created in this country this year, as acknowledged by the Reserve Bank, are part-time. Who has part-time bills? No-one has part-time bills. No-one has a part-time mortgage. There is massive underemployment in this country. We have record underemployment, record low wages growth and we can see what is happening in terms of jobs. Those opposite say that they are here to help, but this is how they have helped young people. Remember when they brought in the idea that they would stop young people from getting Newstart for six months?

Mr Bowen interjecting—

Then their answer was, shadow Treasurer, that they would bring it down to five weeks—because you do not have to eat for five weeks. That is the ridiculous situation that we have. What else happened? They cut $1 billion out of support for apprentices; apprentice numbers plummeted by roughly 130,000. We urged the government, for instance, to fix VET FEE-HELP so that young people could get access to vocational education and not be ripped off for it. They dragged the chain on that and did not help at all. Then, for young people who want to get a job, skill themselves up or go to university, what do they do next? They tried to bring in uni deregulation to price young people out of university. In their heart of hearts, they still believe that there should be $100,000 uni degrees—that is it. In their heart of hearts, that is their answer.

Further, the government savagely cut programs that would have made a difference for young people to get into work, programs like Youth Connections. Youth Connections was a tragic victim of their first budget, in 2014. Only when the damage was done did they slink back in here and re-fund it, but they did not call it Youth Connections; their big move was to call it Youth Connect. That was their big move.

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